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Childhood Trauma and the Science of Addiction
From: Fighting For Space
$0.52
In 1998, Dr. Gabor Mate placed a lucrative career on hold and joined hands with Liz Evans, treating addicts in the Downtown Eastside. Mate’s eight years with the Portland Hotel meant physical and mental improvements for hundreds of patients. It also lead to a new understanding of addiction and why drug use was so rampant in the Downtown Eastside. Mate saw a common thread in his patients: every one of them was a victim of trauma. He concluded that this was a significant contributing factor to their addiction and argued that they were not criminals, but victims who were being victimized again. Today, this theory of addiction is generally accepted in more progressive circles, but it was revolutionary at the time, shaped by Mate’s work in the PHS.
Contributors
Travis Lupick
Travis Lupick is an award-winning journalist based in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. He has more than a decade's experience working as a staff reporter for the Georgia Straight newspaper and has also written about drug addiction, harm reduction, and mental health for the Toronto Star, the Walrus, and Al Jazeera English, among other outlets. For his reporting on Canada's opioid crisis, Lupick received the Canadian Association of Journalists' Don McGillivray Award for best overall investigative report of 2016 and two 2017 Jack Webster awards for excellence in B.C. journalism. He has also worked as a journalist in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Malawi, Nepal, Bhutan, Peru, and Honduras.